The case,which involved one of the most prolific and elusive serial killers in modern American history,had remained an object of intense focus for many. In 2016,the the FBI made a renewed plea - complete with a $US50,000 reward - for help in finding the person whom they called"the violent and elusive individual".
"Everyone was afraid,"Special Agent Marcus Knutson,who was born and raised in Sacramento and was heading the FBI's portion of the investigation,said in a 2016 statement."We had people sleeping with shotguns,we had people purchasing dogs. People were concerned,and they had a right to be. This guy was terrorising the community. He did horrible things."
The Sacramento District Attorney had said a"major announcement"was coming in the case at noon Pacific time on Wednesday,following reports from several local news organisations that a man had finally been arrested in connection with the case.
Beginning in 1976,the Golden State Killer is believed to have raped dozens of women in their homes - meticulously planning his intrusions,sometimes ambushing entire families,and killing several of his victims towards the end of his spree,before vanishing in 1986. The attacker was also behind numerous residential burglaries in the state,the FBI said.
"He was young - anywhere from 18 to 30 - Caucasian,and athletic,capable of eluding capture by jumping roofs and vaulting tall fences,"the late crime writer Michelle McNamara wrote in a Los Angeles magazine profile of the old cases. She later wrote the bookI'll be gone in the dark,based on the crimes,which was published posthumously.
"To zero in on a victim he often entered the home beforehand when no one was there,learning the layout,studying family pictures,and memorising names,"she wrote.
"He disabled porch lights and unlocked windows. He emptied bullets from guns. He hid shoelaces or rope under cushions to use as ligatures.
"These manoeuvres gave him a crucial advantage because when you woke from a deep sleep to the blinding flashlight and ski-masked presence,he was always a stranger to you,but you were not to him."
Police first dubbed the man the East Area Rapist,as he would not begin killing until much later in his spree.
The first known attack took place in the middle of the night in the summer of 1976,when the man sneaked into a home in east Sacramento County,raped a young woman and left.
He raped again a few weeks later,then again and again,dozens of times. After a year,two dozen women had been attacked and a sheriff's department spokesman told The Associated Press that some residents had started"sleeping in shifts",because the man would strike even if others were home.
His 44th victim was a 13-year-old girl in the Walnut Creek area in 1979,theMercury News reported. He allegedly raped her at knifepoint while her father and sister slept down the hall,told her he'd kill her if she told anyone,and departed through the back yard,past her playhouse.
The night stalker
Police rebranded him the Original Night Stalker after he began to kill in 1978. His first victims were a married couple,whom he found walking their dog in the Sacramento Area,chased them and shot them dead.
Future killings would be much more meticulous,and spread from Sacramento to southern California.
On December 30,1979,police in Goleta found a husband and wife dead in their house - one shot through the heart and one in the back of the head.
"As detectives processed the crime scene,they stepped around a turkey carcass wrapped in cellophane that had been discarded on the patio,"McNamara wrote inLos Angeles Magazine."The killer had opened the refrigerator and helped himself to[victim Robert] Offerman's leftover Christmas dinner."
Another couple were murdered in Ventura three months later,she wrote. Then yet another couple,in a gated community in Dana Point.
He left few clues,and only betrayed a few patterns as his violence escalated:he often ate from his victims'fridges;often took tokens from their personal belongings,such as class rings.
He usually tied up the men before he killed them and almost always raped the women.
Police did not even realise the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker were the same person until DNA tests linked all the crimes in the early 2000s,McNamara wrote.
By then,his spree was long over - the last victim being 18-year-old Janelle Cruz,bludgeoned to death in Irvine in 1986 - and the trail had gone cold.
'Closure'
Jane Carson-Sandler,who was sexually assaulted in California in 1976 by a man believed to be the East Area Rapist,said she received an email on Wednesday from a retired detective who had worked on the case,telling her the rapist had been identified and he was in custody.
"I have just been overjoyed,ecstatic. It's an emotional roller-coaster right now,"Carson-Sandler,who now lives near Hilton Head,South Carolina,told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
"I feel like I'm in the middle of a dream and I'm going to wake up and it's not going to be true. It's just so nice to have closure and to know he's in jail."
Carson-Sandler was attacked in her home in Citrus Heights. A home in that community belonging to a former police officer was being searched on Wednesday by FBI investigators and police from several agencies.
Billy Jensen,one of the writers responsible for researchingI’ll Be Gone in the Dark posted a news clipping on Twitter showing that DeAngelo was once a policeman outside Sacramento who was fired after being accused of shoplifting a can of dog repellent and a hammer at a drug store.
He chose not to fight for his job and hastily accepted his punishment without answering any of the city’s investigations,the article said.
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Two months later,a suspect,later believed to be the East Area Rapist,stabbed a dog while prowling through a suburb.
McNamara died in 2016,but her actor-comedian husband Patton Oswalt helped finish the book.
Authorities said the book did not help them catch DeAngelo,which led Oswalt to react on Twitter.
"Also,the cops will NEVER and HAVE NEVER credited a writer or journalist for helping them solve a case. But every time they said #GoldenStateKiller they credited the work of #MichelleMcNamara and #IllBeGoneInTheDark,"he wrote.
US authorities were so keen to catch the killer they investigated a theory he moved to Australia and committed rapes on young girls in Melbourne in the 1980s and 1990s.
That rapist earned an Australian moniker - Mr Cruel.
Victorian Police investigated the potential link between Mr Cruel and California's Golden State Killer and ruled it out.
At Wednesday's press conference in Sacramento,the District Attorney also dismissed a trans-Pacific connection.
"We have no information the person was linked to Australia,"Schubert said.
Washington Post,New York Times,Fairfax Media,AAP